Cookery Courses: Sauces

As any fan of fine dining will
know, a sauce can make or break a dish, so I signed up for this cookery class with Waitrose Cookery School to
learn how to make no less than 10 classics

Before setting foot in Waitrose Cookery School I had a tough decision
on my (not yet flour-coated) hands: which one of the mouth-watering
100 plus cookery courses to go for? From perfecting a steak, to
creating Persian dishes, discovering flavours of Morocco or
sharpening knife skills, I could almost smell the aromas and see
the juices ooze from a seemingly never-ending list on the website.
Needless to say, the classes are wide-ranging and with a desire to
try every one, the choice a tad testing. Having learnt a staple few
skills, but certainly not a vast amount, I was most intrigued by
the 'sauces' cookery class to extend a not particularly
far-reaching repertoire. My next stop: Finchley Road.

Inside a rather
inconspicuous-looking entrance at the back of one of its branches
lives Waitrose's smart and satisfyingly sleek cookery school. It
has been running on this site for almost six years - there's
another in Salisbury and a third in King's Cross. Set on the top
floor, a long, light-filled, wooden-floored room is divided into
two sections: the 'school' and the 'dining room'. The school is
made up of 12 work stations: white surfaces glisten under steel and
are stacked high with every utensil we could possibly need for the
10 recipes ahead. The dining room features wooden workbenches (from
which we later sampled our creations), bookshelves filled with
cookery tomes and a sprawling wine unit along one wall.

We began with a very basic brown
chicken stock. Our chef talked us through the recipe -
demonstrating each part of the process as we stood poised with
pencils and notebooks given to us on arrival. While he diced
onions, chopped carrots and sliced mushrooms, he regaled anecdotes
from his days as a chef at Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons (mornings
began in the kitchen at 5am where they whipped up béarnaise
sauces). We were then promptly sent off to create our own.
Gulp.

Ingredients for each recipe were
neatly stacked at our stations. It's a pacey class - flitting every
20 minutes or so between demonstrations and creating our own
sauces. Working in pairs allowed us to absorb the different stages,
while creating a jolly team spirit. (Not so jolly when the
béarnaise sauce took a sticky turn. Apparently placing the sauce
over a bowl of ice cubes loosens it up).

We whipped up a mayonnaise, fish
stock, velouté, beurre blanc, red wine jus, sauce anglaise
and chocolate sauce. While ingredients were distributed, sauces
stirred and whisks whirled, we asked questions when we needed to -
striving for precision was key. Two breaks allowed us to debrief
with our fellow classmates and try out one of our sauces in a meat
or vegetable dish. While quick, it's a fun, informal and
collaborative class with lots of advice, guidance and a useful
scope of sauces to master.